I found Farley Mowat's "Never Cry Wolf" ten years after
it had been written. It was on the assigned reading list
for a comparative animal behavior class I was taking.
The year was 1973, and I was still in college. Never Cry
Wolf had an intense affect on me, and I trace my interest
in environmental issues back to that introduction to Mowat's
work. Ten years later, Mowat's book became a popular Disney
movie.

Twenty years after the movie was released, the flagship for
the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was dedicated and
named the Farley Mowat. This week, that same ship was
illegally boarded by Canadian authorities while captain
(Paul Watson) and crew were attempting to chronicle the
horrors of Canada's annual baby seal slaughter. Paul Watson
was one of the original founders of Greenpeace. In March,
the Farley Mowat was boarded by Japanese whalers. Watson
was shot in the chest. His life was saved by a bulletproof
vest.

Farley Mowat was the man who introduced me to the injustice
of animal abuse. Wolves are the most humane of non-human
mammals and live in loving well developed family groups.
Read Never Cry Wolf and I guarantee that you will share my
profound appreciation of these gentle intelligent creatures.

Canadian authorities once suspected that wolves were
destroying caribou herds. Mowat taught them something they
did not want to know. Man was the mass murderer, not wolf.
Hunters with guns, not wolves with sharp teeth. Sure, they
ate an occasional caribou. Native Inuit Canadians respect
the wolves. They thin out the herd by eating the sick and
infirm. In that regard, wolves keep the herd strong. Mowat
observed that the major food source for wolves in the
Canadian wilderness was field mice, not caribou.

Which brings us to the Wisconsin wilderness and the latest
dairy industry animal abuse story. The dairy industry is
blaming its financial ills on wolves. What nonsense. Milk
marketing geniuses are now terrifying cheeseheads.

In today's attached article, take note when the farmers
admit that bones are rarely fround from missing cows.
When you get to this sentence in the attached story, note
the irony:

***"Tandler said he is selling most of his cows because
he can't keep up with the gas and feed expenses along
with losing money on animals."***

The United States Department of Agriculture compensates
every dairy farmer for a reported missing cow due to a
wolf attack. Anybody smell a scam?

Canis lupus will soon lose their lives to the the lies
offered by homo sapiens.

Judy Antczak is nervous. In about three weeks, she is expecting
about 60 calves to be born on her 150-acre farm, 20 miles east
of Rice Lake. She knows that not all the animals will survive.

A growing wolf population in the area will nab a handful of the
newborn calves, Antczak said.

'The wolves are here every day,' she said. 'We don't see them but
we see their tracks. The wolves have been here all year. They were
howling on the fence line in the middle of the day.'

Antczak has a permit to shoot wolves, but so far she hasn't been
successful. She has lived on the farm since 1961, but she's only
seen problems with wolves in the past six years.

"I'm worried because there is getting to be so many of them,"
she said.

Antczak said she has lost about 20 animals on her farm to wolves.

'The wolves can get to just about anything,' she said. 'They killed
one right behind a house here. Last year, they killed an adult
heifer. That's the biggest one we lost."

Adrian Wydeven, an ecologist and director of the state's wolf
program, estimates there were between 540 and 577 wolves in the
state in 2007. His organization will meet next week in Wausau to
go over population estimates for this year.

'We've seen increases almost every year since 1985, but it
seems our wolf population has leveled off this year,' Wydeven
said, citing a cold winter as a reason for some of the older
animals dying this year.

Wolves in the state were 'de-listed' in March 2007, meaning the
Department of Natural Resources now allows homeowners to obtain
permits to shoot wolves on their property. Any wolves that are
killed must be turned over to the DNR within 24 hours, he said.

'It does ease people's minds, that they have these permits,'
Wydeven said.

Last year, the DNR trapped 38 wolves and another three were shot
by landowners, he said.

Drew Tandler has a 210-acre farm 10 miles north of Weyerhaeuser,
and he also has seen a number of cattle vanish in the past four
or five years. One year he should have had 30 calves but wound
up with just eight.

'They went somewhere,' Tandler said. 'The cows were pregnant.'

The wolves work together to corner cows, he said.

'They pushed (a cow) out into a swamp, and they took the calf
right from her,' Tandler said.

Tandler said it often is difficult just to find the carcasses
because the wolves destroy the animals so completely.

'A calf was ripped apart, torn in all directions,' he said.
'There's a lot that are killed that we never see.'

Tandler agreed with Antczak that this time of year is the
worst, when calves are being born.

'(The wolves) can smell the blood in the air when the cows are
calving, and they are right there,' he said. 'He'll howl for
other ones to come, and they'll come. I've heard this happen time
and time again. When they howl, I'll shoot a gun up in the air.'

Tandler said he is selling most of his cows because he can't keep
up with the gas and feed expenses along with losing money on animals.

Antczak said one of her frustrations is that she gets reimbursed
from the state for lost animals, but it often is a several-month
wait.

Wydeven said the DNR just sent out a press release stating that a
dog was killed by wolves in Forest County. Last year, wolves killed
13 dogs in the state.

One of the questions at Conservation Congress hearings tonight
whether there should be a hunting season on wolves. Wydeven said
he sees that as an eventual way to control the population, but he
said the number of permits would have to be limited to prevent too
high of a harvest.

In the state of Wisconsin live 5.6 million humans,
1.2 million cows, and 45 dozen wolves.

That averages out to about 7.5 acres per human, 35
acres per cow, and 77,629 acres per wolf (one wolf
for every 121 square miles).

The census bureau does not list the number of young
girls who walk through Wisconsin woods wearing red
riding hoods.